22 months old!

Gabriela's language has taken off this last month. She repeats everything. The other day Beau asked, "What's so funny?!?" which Gabriela clearly repeated. Instead of just saying "book" to read something, she says "I wanna read book". Gabriela sings words to songs and asks for "mee-mee" (music) the instant we get in the car. She has also made up other words. For example, she says "nees" when she wants to wash her hands, which is very often. I think she might be trying to say "sink". She says "Chaney 'mau'" when she wants him to chase her.

Gabriela is quite the little counter. In English she says "two, four, five, six" mostly, and sometimes continues on to ten. In Spanish, she says "uno, dos, cuatro, cinco" and on and on until DIEZ! I don't know what she has against the number three, in either English or Spanish, but she won't say it.

Gabriela is getting the hang of birthdays after celebrating two in a row. She continues to wish her daddy a happy birthday spontaneously days after his big day. It's pretty sweet hearing her announce, "happy birthday, daddy!"

Gabriela's top incisor teeth finally poked through several days ago. Just yesterday we noticed the bottom ones peeking through her poor, swollen gums. Maybe this is the reason she's been kind of clingy lately.

The other morning, Gabriela was still in bed with her baby doll when she suddenly put the baby's hands together and sternly said, "No hitting!" Then, she threw the baby in the corner and said in a strong voice, "timeout! no!!" A minute or so later, she picked up her baby, kissed her, and said, "gentle". Now we know for sure that she understands hitting is not acceptable, and that she knows what happens when you hit. The unfortunate part is that she continues to do it. We're working on it.